About SDD

Areas of Focus

I focus on a set of strategic, business development, marketing and sales process experiences to generate high growth or turnaround for my clients. I am looking at these with a perspective of creating the right process and the right outcome. To fix the problems that exist. To say this, I also point to the fact that I have been doing this for a long time with a high probability of success.

My Story

I have been in large organizations such as Sprint LTD, Times Mirror, and Marconi PLC. I have been in several small startups. In all of these companies, I more or less thrived in environments where I was fixing an strategic, operational or marketing problem. I believe I was pretty good at this, and as such created several very successful outcomes.

In 1991 I joined a technology company being responsible for strategy and marketing. My key goal was to figure out what was wrong and how to create hyper-growth. Within two years, I had two $100M team successes to my credit. I have also had two $100M successes with new products. By 1993, I had formed my own consulting company to do this for a wide range of organizations. By 2005, I had spent five years at Marconi as one of the principle trouble shooters trying to figure out how to turnaround the company. After 2005, I have worked in mostly startups and small technology companies. In the startup world, I have been involved in raising roughly $20M in equity or debt funding.

In 1993 through 2000, I ran TECHscape Communications which was a successful, $1M development and marketing consultancy. We helped companies such as ADC Telecom, AMP Corporation, Jerry Conn & Associates, Jones Intercable, Sprint LTD, USTEC, Telebeam and many others. Things certainly have changed since them, but the business development needs of organizations have remained the same … companies need help to market and to sell products and services!

Meet Steve Day

Steve A. Day, Founder

I believe that the ultimate and purest form of competitive success is creating a awareness and demand for a product and service, and then selling this good into that demand. Achieving pull through marketing is further enhanced when this same marketing effort is not obvious to the consumer. The competitive and creative outcome to accomplish this task is very fulfilling. It has been a skill and passion of mine for 10s of years.

Vision, strategy, design, tactics, planning, and objectives all flow from this specific interest. For me, I have been talented or lucky enough to grow several $100M businesses. I have seen what it takes and what it looks like. I have also seen my share of failures. Where I have also learned a great deal.

In either case, I have spent an extraordinary amount of time looking at what works and what does not work. At this point, I will only say one important thing about these experiences.

“The differences between good and bad organizational execution is hard to see from the inside, and easy to see from the outside looking in.”

Why is this?

Strategic planning is all too often polluted with self edification. While it is always good that the planning supports and celebrates past success, it all too often gets in the way of 20:20 vision. Competitors that are moving ahead. Products that are missing the market. Sales team execution weaknesses. Many times, these are partially or totally obscured in the planning process.

Marketing is a publishing effort. Product launches, advertising deadlines, analytical analysis and reporting can easily consume the day to day workforce. After this incredible effort, it is often impossible to step back long enough to see if the program is working

The organization may also lack the knowledge and experience to even judge if the program is working or not. Planning, marketing design, sales automation is often a part time responsibility. The generalist may not be the best suited to pass judgement. Simply put, it is why business performance consulting is a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

These three areas have been my strength for a long time. I attribute it to an early career in science and engineering. I began my career as a telecom engineer for Sprint LTD, after focusing on Chemistry in college. I matriculated to running a large construction and engineering design organization for Times Mirror Cable Television. At mid career, I decided to transition to marketing and sales. It was more in-line with my interests and sense of entrepreneurship.

The reason I explain this is that when I started to look at improving development, marketing and sales; I did so from an engineering perspective. Hypothesis development, gathering of empirical data and drawing conclusions were second nature. This skill uniquely serves me to make these judgments. It is what my client’s pay for.

As a key bonus, I had the technical background in broadband, web services and multimedia that has provided an inside track on understanding the role that media would play moving forward. This has always been my differentiated approach.

Next Steps…

If your organization is not performing to your goals, and your current staff is not able to improve the results; then you owe it to yourself to call and see if I can help you. There is no downside in having a conversation to see if I can help you succeed. Particularly, since I do look at organization, product and marketing together.